Why Does Gender Bias Persist?
When my mother decided she wanted to work outside of the home, she faced incredible challenges. She was told that her place was at home, that she would never match up to a man, and that she would bring disrepute to her family. Employers asked her if she planned to have children, what she would do if her husband got transferred, and even held interviews in hotel rooms where men on the panel sipped whiskeys. Despite the challenges, my mother, and many women like her, battled sexism, negative stereotyping, and discrimination at work, society, and at home to scale incredible heights.
It has been forty years since my mother chose to work. While incredible strides have been made in reducing the gender gap since then, it persists stubbornly in varying degrees across the world.
Evidence shows that global progress on gender parity has been mixed when assessed across several dimensions, including: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment. While individual countries have made incredible progress, on average, we have a long way to go. According to the World Economic Forum, it will take us 95 years to close the gender gap in political representation, with women holding only a quarter of parliamentary seats and of ministerial positions today. Worse still, it will take us a staggering 257 years to achieve parity in economic participation and opportunity.1
This forces us to ask questions about how gender biases came to be in the first place, and why they have been so stubborn across millennia despite major changes in how humans think or organize themselves. For example, despite the enormity of objective evidence and philosophical arguments that the scientific revolution has produced favoring gender parity, we are still far from being unbiased. Behavioral science could help us understand why we hold these biases that are so hard to get rid of, and more importantly, give us some insights on how to change mindsets and ensure gender parity in society, at work, and at home.
References
- https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality
- Robert Jackson (2017). Down So Long . . . The Puzzling Persistence of Gender Inequality, Cambridge University Press
- E. J. Girvan, G. Deason, E. Borgida (2015). The generalizability of gender bias: Testing the effects of contextual, explicit, and implicit sexism on labor arbitration decisions. Law and Human Behavior, 39(5), 525–537
- Daniel Kahneman Explains the Machinery of Thought (2016), www.fs.org
- M. R. Banaji, A. G. Greenwald (1995). Implicit gender stereotyping in judgments of fame. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2), 181–198
- Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald (2013), Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Penguin Books
- Eliana Avitzour, Adi Choen, Daphna Joel, Victor Lavy (2020). On the Origins of Gender-Biased Behavior: The Role of Explicit and Implicit Stereotypes. NBER Working Paper No. 27818
- Ralph Lewis (2018). Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If The Universe Doesn’t. Prometheus Books
- Ralph Lewis (2018). What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change? www.psychologytoday.com
- Ralph Lewis (2018). What Actually Is a Belief? And Why Is It So Hard to Change? www.psychologytoday.com
- Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140
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- Keith E. Stanovich, Richard F. West, Maggie E. Toplak (2013). Myside Bias, Rational Thinking, and Intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(4):259-264
- Elizabeth Kolbert (2017). Why Facts don’t change our minds. www.newyorker.com
- Lori Beaman, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, Petia Topalova (2009). Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 124, issue 4, 1497-1540
- Ebonya Washington (2007). Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers’ Voting on Women’s Issues. Yale University and NBER
- Justine Eatenson Tinkler, Yan E. Li, Stefanie Mollborn (2007). Can Legal Interventions Change Beliefs? The Effect of Exposure to Sexual Harassment Policy on Men’s Gender Beliefs. Social Psychology Quarterly
- S. Anukriti (2018). Financial Incentives and the Fertility-Sex Ratio Trade-off, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10 (2): 27-57
- Iris Bohnet (2016). What Works: Gender Equality by Design. Harvard University Press
- Gaucher, D., Friesen, J., Kay, A. C. (2011). Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 101, No. 1, 109–128.
- Bertrand, M., Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. The American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 4, 991-1013.
- Ziegert, J. C., Hanges, P. J. (2005). Employment Discrimination: The Role of Implicit Attitudes, Motivation, and a Climate for Racial Bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 3, 553–562.
- Bohnet, I., van Geen, A., Bazerman, M. (2016). When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint vs. Separate Evaluation. Management Science, 62(5), 1225-1234.
- Goldin, C., Rouse., C. (2000). Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians. The American Economic Review, Vol. 90, No. 4, 715–741.
- Esther Duflo (2012). Women Empowerment and Economic Development. Journal of Economic Literature 2012, 50(4), 1051–1079
About the Author
Siddharth Ramalingam
Siddharth’s diverse education and experience feed his interest in the applicability of behavioral science in understanding our world and solving big problems. His work encompasses international development, consulting, finance, and social innovation. Apart from an MPA from Harvard University, he also has graduate degrees in Political Theory, Human Rights Law, Management, and Economics.
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